board learned of his sex orientation, informed the Los Angeles Board of Education and he was not allowed to continue teaching in any public school in California. He was obliged to take a job at a small college in another state, though his parents were aged and depended on him to run their orange To make matters worse, in the state where he could teach it was grove. even difficult for a fellow to get a drink with which to console himself. In 1957 I visited the League of Women Voters while they were studying liberty and security. The Federal Employees Program was in operation and was scrutinizing "behavior showing untrustworthiness, deliberate misrepresentation, criminal and immoral acts including drug addiction and sexual perversion." Of course I plunged into the subject of homosexuality and the ladies were delighted and said I ought to join the League because I had so much to offer. I joined and the ladies continued to give homosexuality as a reason to be fired from federal, state and city jobs. Realizing that I was only a housewife (and why should the League believe me?) I fled to Langley Porter Clinic, where the wonderful Karl Bowman, famous psychiatrist, and several others, gave me hours of their time, many pamphlets, and permission to quote them. But the ladies remained adamant, saying that homosexuals are subject to blackmail. Quoting Dr. Bowman I pointed out that if the stigma were removed there would be nothing to blackmail. They retorted that there was always a stigma to abnormality. When I quoted Alfred E. Kinsey on the prevalance of homosexuality they only laughed naughtily.

Evidently sex education should be started in the first grade of grammar school-before people get "sot"-and why shouldn't a little about homosexuality be included? This reminds me that after appearing on Don Sherwood's TV program recently in favor of freedom to read and learn, I was thrilled to have a phone call from a friend, Bill Marlin, who is a deacon of a Presbyterian Church. He volunteered enthusiastically, "I learned about forbidden things very young because I was curious. But it didn't make me DO them."I am not welcome in the home of a woman doctor friend if accom panied by a male homosexual architect. She and her husband are both graduates of Stanford School of Medicine but they have children and say that homosexuals molest young people, and besides, it's against their Christian religion. Bible sticklers quote to me Genesis, Chapter 19, and Romans 1:26, 27, to prove that homosexuality is a sin. I quote them Deuteronomy 25:5, wherein it is stated that a woman who has been widowed without offspring may seek sexual relations with her husband's brother. The sticklers do not condone this custom. It's fallen out of use because of moral and legal changes in our civilization. Evidently it's easier to discredit a teaching in favor of some kind of sex expression than one that is opposed. What DOES the human race have against sex? According to the Malthus theory the trouble with the world was that there were too many people in it and anything which mattachine REVIEW

tended to promote "early connections" only aggravated the sum of mankind's misery. But now we have contraceptives, and besides, homosexuality does not lead to over-population. One certainly can't deny the connection between sex and disease but my internist, who's on the staff at University of California School of Medicine, tells me that VD really is not the punishment that it used to be, thanks to wonder drugs.

The only person I've ever been able to teach anything to about homosexuality was a girl friend who was a dancer with the San Francisco Ballet. She understood that 50% of the male dancers in her company were homosexuals but said she didn't know what they did. I told her and she said "Well, thank you very much, we had heard about sex in Seattle but they didn't tell

us that."

On a Saturday in December 1959 I was reading the San Francisco Chronicle during breakfast when I learned there was to be a seminar called "Should Americans Read About Sex," sponsored by the Mattachine Society. Dr. Karl Bowman had shown me the society's REVIEW and NEWSLETTER copies and of course Assessor Russell Wolden had made Mattachine known to most San Franciscans by blasting it during his 1959 campaign for mayor. I certainly did believe that Americans should be able to read about sex or any other subject so I dropped all my plans for the day and hurried down to the seminar that very afternoon. I was so pleased with it that I contrived to return for cocktails, dinner and the evening forum. Since then I've become a subscriber to the NEWSLETTER and REVIEW and attended as many of the soc iety's functions as possible. Perhaps I should write to dear Abbey and say "in answer to all the women who express a wish for platonic friendships" -no I'd better not do that. Mattachine is an educational not a social organization. But with the permission of the editor I'll quote from a letter to him, published in the REVIEW of February 1960, in which I say, "Congratulations on your wonderful group-the friendliest, most fun-loving and intellectually stimulating I've found in poor old SF." I always leave a meeting or a benefit feeling glad that I went and thankful for the new friends I'm making and the chance to hear of the things in which I'm interested-censorship, medicine, law, etc. Incidentally I have yet to be bored with tales about the member's wonderful children, grandchildren or terrible spouses.

In talking to a Mattachine man I was amazed to hear him say that women just get crushes on each other. I thought most people had had a sister or friend who'd gone on about her nights with Betty and been shown the blue satin ribbon from her gown. Don't all intellectuals read "The Well of Loneliness'? Last year an amazing thing happened. My husband came home with a grocery box of books a co-worker's wife had discarded and from it I chose "Diana" by Diana Frederics. A few days later when a Mattachine officer proudly showed me the Society's library, one of the first books I spied was